Tennessee Supreme Court Overturns Appelate Court Reversal on Retaliation Case

Retaliation cases generally require an employee to prove that his or her employer took an adverse employment action as a result of the employee’s participation in “protected activity,” as that term itself is defined under law. Generally speaking, an employer will not be held liable for retaliation if said employer was unaware of the employee’s participation in the “protected activity” in question (for example, complaining of unlawful discrimination).

This distinction was interpreted in two different ways in a recent lawsuit between Jim Ferguson – a longtime employee of Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) – and MTSU itself, in which he complained that his HR supervisor, Dana Byrd, continued to assign work tasks to him that exceeded the medical restrictions he had.

After later filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), claiming that discrimination had resulted from his race and national origin, and citing a hostile work environment, Ferguson also filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against MTSU, alleging violations of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as state law.

“Things got pretty heated and pretty rough,” Fergusen said, and alleged that his work assignments were drastically increased after his lawsuit was filed.

Although Ferguson was unable to prove his claims of discrimination and a hostile work environment, he did prevail on his retaliation claim, and he was awarded damages of $3 million as a result. Although a jury had found Ferguson’s retaliation claim to be with merit, the court of appeals subsequently reversed the verdict, stating that Ferguson failed to prove that Byrd (in contrast to other MTSU managers) was actually aware of the discrimination complaints filed by Ferguson when she made the extra assignments in question.

Although the court of appeals overturned the jury’s decision, the Tennessee Supreme Court eventually reversed the decision made by the court of appeals, choosing to reinstate the jury verdict against MTSU. The reason for this reversal, as stressed by the Tennessee Supreme Court, was that the critical question was whether or not there was material evidence that could support the verdict reached by the jury. As pointed out by the Tennessee Supreme Court, juries are charged with deciding which witnesses they find most credible, and are then allowed to call upon their own experiences and common sense to reach a decision.

Although Byrd had testified that she “couldn’t really remember for sure” the complaints lodged by Ferguson, nor could she remember when the complaints were filed in correlation to the increase in work she assigned to him, the court noted that Byrd substantially increased Ferguson’s work assignments – going beyond his restrictions – mere days after MTSU was served with the first lawsuit.

Notably, the Tennessee Supreme Court did not address the sufficiency of general corporate knowledge in employment retaliation cases. While general corporate knowledge is often determined to be sufficient for individual knowledge to be credited, the Tennessee Supreme Court instead stressed that the jury’s findings would be accorded great weight, and should only be changed when the court is unable to satisfactorily identify adequate evidence to support the verdict. As the jury had determined that there was sufficient evidence to support the idea that Byrd was aware of Ferguson’s protected activity, the Tennessee Supreme Court chose to reinstate the award.

The main key in this case, as determined by the jury, was Byrd’s testimony that she believed Ferguson filed a pair of complaints, which was determined to establish that she had knowledge of the protected activity at some point, even if it was unclear when, exactly such knowledge was acquired. According to the Tennessee Supreme Court, the drastic change in Ferguson’s work assignments – with no other explanation for such an increase in work – provided “additional proof from which the jury could infer when Byrd learned about the lawsuit.” They went on to state that although “temporal proximity, by itself, is not enough to prove knowledge,” it could be “considered by the jury, along with other direct or circumstantial evidence of knowledge, to support an inference that the employer had the requisite knowledge.”

Ultimately, the illustration in this case is that appellate courts must afford a significant level of deference to jury verdicts. As such, it is very difficult for such verdicts to be overturned.